E5M8: Field of Judgement (Heretic)

E5M8: Field of Judgement is the eighth and final level in The Stagnant Demesne episode of Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders. It uses the music track "Arpo" by Kevin Schilder. As in the episode Hell's Maw, the player is faced with a group of maulotaurs as a boss.

Essentials
The player starts in a spider-shaped enclosure containing all the weapons minus the Firemace, and lots of artifacts and ammo. Don't get the Silver Shield yet, since there is an Enchanted Shield shortly after. Once you've collected the weapons and as much ammo as you can carry, activate the Wings of Wrath (located on the center trident prong) and fly over the trident to lower the outer arena to begin the episode's boss battle against a group of maulotaurs.

Once the walls have lowered, run and collect the newly revealed Enchanted Shield and Tome of Power, and begin circle strafing the maulotaurs while firing with a weapon of your choice with the intent to gather the maulotaurs together. Once they're in a tightly packed group, a highly effective strategy is to activate the Ring of Invincibility and Tome of Power simultaneously, and use the Phoenix Rod's flamethrower at point blank range for maximum damage (hold down the fire button the whole time to conserve ammo). Once the Invincibility expires most of the maulotaurs should be badly hurt, if not dead. Finish them off by whatever means necessary; there is nothing beyond this point so hit them with anything you want.

Once the final maulotaur is destroyed, the eight posts at the corners of the 'legs' will lower. Enter any one to finish the level (and, finally, the game).

Secrets
There are no official secrets in this level.

Bugs
In vanilla Heretic, the game can crash with a visplane overflow error if the whole level is in your field of view after the posts are lowered. This has the highest probability of occurring near the north-east, south-east, south-west and north-west corners.

Speedrunning
As this level does not contain official secrets, the NM 100S category is redundant.

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on June 3, 2022.

Player spawns
This level contains seven spawn points:
 * 1) facing north. (thing 4)
 * 2) facing north. (thing 5)
 * 3) facing south. (thing 6)
 * 4) facing north. (thing 72)
 * 5) facing north. (thing 82)
 * 6) facing north. (thing 90)
 * 7) facing north. (thing 98)

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level: